Antifragile Agriculture
Our food production system is full of risk and rife with uncertainty; from extreme weather to soaring input prices to crop diseases and pests, there is always an unanticipated challenge around the bend. So how can agriculture position itself to gain from disorder and uncertainty rather than collapse?
Today, most farms are one unforeseen stressor away from going out of business or, at the very least, falling deep in debt. This is an example of what Nassim Taleb would call a fragile system.
In Taleb's book, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, he explains that the opposite of fragile is antifragile:
"Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile."
Taleb's concept of antifragility has been applied to business management, investing, engineering, physics, risk analysis, and urban planning, among others. However, it hasn't been applied to agriculture as a tool for planning, derisking, and overall better systems design. There couldn't be a better fit.
Antifragile Agriculture
Agriculture is arguably humanity's most important activity. It has the potential to positively affect the outcome of our ecological and human health more than just about any other activity. So to think that an unpredictable shock could drastically limit the ability of the agriculture system to hold up our civilization is cause for some worry.
Antifragile agriculture is a farming system that will grow with disorder, flourish through uncertainty, and continuously regenerate itself.
Here are some principles of Antifragile Agriculture:
Build a biological system – most agriculture systems depend on a continual supply of chemical inputs to remain productive. Biological systems are self-perpetuating and become richer and more complex with time.
Redundancy – in place of monocropping, functional redundancy introduces multiple crop types within the system to provide redundancy as a hedge against potential crop failure, supply chain issues, or market instability. Always have multiple yields.
Leverage the water cycle – many farms are designed like parking lots; they shed rainfall and pipe it away as quickly as possible, resulting in soil erosion, nutrient loss, and dehydrated landscapes. Design farms to act like sponges, capture water from rain or flood, infiltrate and store in the soil to rehydrate and bring life to the landscape.
Respect the old – Animals have long been an integral part of agriculture systems. Animals can upcycle plants not suitable for human consumption into nutrient-dense foods. Animals also provide fertility with manures and can uniquely regenerate soil and certain plant communities through proper grazing. This principle is an example of what Taleb refers to as the Lindy Effect.
Lastly, it is vital to understand that fragility and antifragility are degrees on a spectrum. Reaching the antifragile side of the spectrum requires an active feedback loop that elicits a continual assessment of the system, bringing to light where innovation may be needed. The time has come to reexamine agriculture through the lens of antifragility so we can secure our future and gain from the inevitable disorder.
Cover image: Antifragile Schema; by Tatiana Barletta
